In the Midst of My Long Night

I was packing up my notepad and pencil case when Reuben nudged me with his elbow. “I brought something for you.”

“Yeah?” I made sure my water bottle wouldn’t leak, and shoved it in my rucksack. “What is it?”

He pulled a huge book from his bag, and held it out to me. A hand clasped a burning crown on the dark cover. “You should read it,” he said as I took it. “I think you’ll like it.”

I managed a weak smile. How was I ever going to get through all those pages? “Thanks, Reuben.” I squeezed it into my rucksack, its bulk visible through the canvas fabric. “It looks great.”

When I got home from school, I unpacked my bag, and put A Game of Thrones in the airing cupboard with my other books. It was swallowed by shelves upon shelves of titles just waiting for someone to love them.

It sat there in complete darkness for a few months, the stories contained within the closed covers trapped on the pages.

Then my life turned upside down.

I dropped out of school at the end of Year Nine with severe mental health problems, as a result of excessive bullying from my peers. I would spend my days for the next year having panic attacks every time someone knocked on the door, or whenever the phone rang. I didn’t leave the house once for six months. My body started to shut down, and I ended up losing just over two stone in four weeks. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t function properly. I was trapped in my house, my mind a prison I couldn’t break free from. I needed a distraction.

That’s when I finally immersed myself in Game of Thrones.

I should have done it sooner.

The series transported me away from my everyday worries, a form of escape that I could flee into whenever I picked up the novel, or watched the series. While other people my age were beginning their GCSEs, worrying about their futures, and what academic path they would take, I was curled up in an armchair at home, my thoughts as far from Maths or Science as they possibly could be. I was in the midst of my own struggle, battling my demons by reading.

I was instantly attached to the characters, to their storylines, but the one that really drew me in was Arya. She was a young girl trying to forge her own path in the world, trying to fight other people’s expectations, and plans for her life. She had her own destiny to fulfill. She left the safety of Winterfell for the dangers of King’s Landing, unfamiliar territory that posed many dangers. Then tragedy struck. The world she had known, and loved was ripped in two. As the story progressed, she rose from the ashes of so much suffering, stronger than before, embracing who she had always been.

I felt like Arya a lot of the time, especially when she was crouched at the feet of Baelor the Blessed, surrounded by people cheering on her father’s execution like hounds baying for blood. She became a fugitive on the run from captivity by the Lannisters. I was that fugitive, trying to run from my situation, yet I was always caught, and the shackles of my mind tightened around my wrists.

Of course, it wasn’t just Arya I connected with. Daenerys had a difficult relationship with her abusive, manipulative brother, the only ‘friend’ she had ever known. She was thrown into the midst of a culture she didn’t understand and, initially, couldn’t comprehend. I felt as out-of-place as she did. Eventually she learned to adapt, and embrace it, using it to her advantage until that also crumbled like ashes, and most of her khalasar abandoned her.

Sansa had the perfect image of what the world was like until that illusion shattered. She faced a new reality surrounded by power-hungry players willing to sacrifice everything for their own personal gain. I was as naïve as Sansa before I dropped out of school, our youthful innocence just waiting to be destroyed.

Jon fought a derogatory label attached to him. He felt as though he wasn’t wanted or valued by the people around him, constantly trying to prove he was more than a bastard. Because Catelyn shunned him, the influential Lady of Winterfell, he removed himself from the rest of the world, and isolated himself far North, searching for acceptance on the Wall. Of course, it was never as simple as that. I stayed at school, and tried to ignore what the bullies were saying about me, but it became part of my identity. I ended up withdrawing to my home, where none of them could reach me, in my own quest for solitude.

Robb grew up and stepped into his destiny earlier than expected when his father, the Lord of Winterfell, went to King’s Landing, while his mother was shrouded in grief. He won battles, made both good and bad mistakes, and lost the war, all while he was still a boy. Because of my situation, I had to grow up. I had to face reality. I had to look at every day, and ask myself ‘How am I going to survive? How am I going to make it through?’ I believed I was losing my own war.

Tyrion was hated for something he had no control over; for being a dwarf. The world used it against him. Even his family despised him. He was just as out-of-place as the rest of them.

Most of those characters were children at the beginning of the series. I was the same age as Dany, Jon, and Robb when I first read the books, but even in the show they were still young. Each of them were forced to grow up after enduring horrific events I could barely comprehend.

I’ve journeyed with them over the past six years, while fighting my demons. Despite the odds, I’ve seen them step into their own, facing hurdle after hurdle. Some have fallen along the way, but that doesn’t discredit the mountains they’ve climbed, or the shadowed valleys they passed through.

Game of Thrones has inspired me to carry on, to never give up hope, and to not surrender to the fight.

I immersed myself in the series entirely, and finished it within the year. By the time I started reading it, season three had already aired. I was late to the game, born three years after the first book was published, but I’ll be there until the very end. At times this seemed very unlikely, parts of my own path consumed by Long Nights, but I’ve defeated the odds so far.

The series inspired me in other ways. With no structured education for three years, and nothing but life-changing series like Game of Thrones to keep me company, I realised what I wanted to do with my life. I dreamed of writing stories, epic fantasy novels like A Song of Ice and Fire, so I could inspire others, as others inspired me. It’s not for wealth, or for fame that I pursue this goal, but so I can create my own characters with real stories readers can gravitate to, with dangerous, perilous journeys I can accompany them on. My mind used to be a prison.

It still is sometimes.

But not always.

Only time will tell whether my dream comes true, but if Arya can defeat the Night King in the Godswood, then I can overcome anything.